


Writhe

by nonphenomenaut



Series: Trapped in Massachusetts [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: 20 years late to the party, Angst, Body Horror, Descriptions of Autopsy, F/M, Freeform, Hurt Fox Mulder, Hurt/Comfort, Regret, Season 1, Sickfic, casefic, post sexual tension, writer indulge thyself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:13:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28199676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonphenomenaut/pseuds/nonphenomenaut
Summary: Scully makes a rash decision for the first time in her life; she'll have the rest of Mulder's to no regret it.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: Trapped in Massachusetts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023522
Comments: 18
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this story decided it was going to be cute and get itself written in one week. my sequel? ...yeah. it's being QUITE the pill to write right now.
> 
> so anyway,
> 
> this story is completely separate from ABaKoM and Fata, we're going waaaaaaay back to season one and this story takes place after the events of 1x15 Lazarus after babyMulder gives babyScully the cold shoulder at the end of the episode. There's also infantesimal mentions of things from 1x13 Beyond the Sea and 1x14 Gender Bender (which are three mighty eps to be throwing at littlemissDana and watching her move on like nothing happened) and then the epilogue comes in the middle of 1x16 Young at Heart when Mulder loses a mentor and gets his own sort of abuse, but you don't have to watch/rewatch any of those episodes to get the gist. just know that these two being deweyfacedbabies trying to prove how competent are to each other are my absolute favorite versions. gah. enjoy!
> 
> case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o50ocJdaoHw

\--  
CHAPTER ONE  
\--

**FBI HEADQUARTERS  
WASHINGTON, D.C.**

There is a silence roaring through her as Special Agent Dana Scully wraps her fingers around the doorknob. Her center and her sole both faintly sore.

Pausing. She checks off each necessity before she goes in. Pretty sure she has a handle. 

Her makeup is perfect. Her seams are all in place. There is not a stray hair with a mind of his own. 

Less than eight hours ago he had been inside her. 

In the clutch of pure physics; she moves.

"Hey. There you are." 

He swoops down on her like a great necktied albatross and pecks a friendly kiss to her cheek. Holding her shoulders momentarily. Like there's still professional courtesy to be had. Like it's still some secret naive fantasy wafting between them in pheromones.

"Good morning Starshine. The Earth says hello." He purrs.

The slide projector is already loaded up and humming, but he directs her eyes with his big black Derbys to a plastic bag from the Army-Navy Surplus on the floor. Its thin plastic is distended with the heavy folds of tread and rubber.

She notices that he's pulled out her chair.

"Hope you don't mind Scully, but I took the liberty of doing a little shopping this morning before work and picked up a couple of things you might need for our trip. Only problem is that I couldn't decide on which pair of chest waders would best bring out the color of your eyes so I went ahead and bought both."

He takes what's becoming his 'usual place' with one hip against the desk and ostentatiously fwicks two plane tickets beneath his chin. He has his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, the worst of his bad ties on. Looking quite pleased with himself.

He's about to start the show when he puts one long finger into the air. 

"Oop. Almost forgot." 

He produces a can of DIE MOSQUITO DIE! by skillfully leaning over for the drawer, setting it reverently into her hands with a little flamboyant wrist twirl before recrossing his arms. "Wouldn't want to be caught dead out there without this." His pumping eyebrows are meant to emphasize his double-entendre.

His unabashed show of happiness is making her insides shrivel. 

Scully can't honestly remember when she sat down. 

He clicks the wand to bring up the first slide and the pull-down screen lights up with a picture of dense green vegetation crowded around the sides of silver water along with spindly trees that hold up a white sky.

"Behold; Hockamock Swamp. Located smack-dab in the middle of what is considered to be thee second most-famous devil's triangle on planet earth: Bridgewater Triangle. An area constantly attributed to many a strange and inexplicable sighting over the years. The name itself 'Hockamock' as named by the indigenous Wampanoag, translates to 'where the spirits dwell'."

He clicks over to another slide like he's selling a destination vacation and wants her to get a timeshare. 

The scenery continues to be wet and mired, with large heart-shaped leaves nodding on long stalks above more still dark water.

"A veritable hotbed of unexplained paranormal shenanigans dating back hundreds of years that include reports of UFOs, giant pterodactyl-like birds, Bigfoot, phantom dogs, ghosts, ghoulies, and other poltergei _tastic_ activities.

"Now you might be asking yourself," here he affects his best Scully voice in a terrible falsetto, and even throws a hand up to his chest in a move she would never make, " _but Mulder, you big handsome genius, what could_ possibly _be so interesting as to warrant a trip out into the boonies right before the weekend?_

"I'm glad you asked, Miss Scully." He responds to himself in his regular voice, clicking the slide advance. 

An amorphous glowing orb lights itself up a long ways off in a dark dark distance, blurry and near impossible to see. But she's starting to know what to look for.

"Our main suspect: a paranormal phenomena from time immemorial substantiated by multiple eye-witness accounts from all over the world; there's the Naga fireballs on the Mekong River in Thailand, the Min Min light of Australia, the Aleya of Bangladesh, the Hessdalen light of Norway, the St. Louis Light in Saskatchewan, the Chir batti of India, and even the luz mala or 'evil light' of Argentina and Uruguay.

"But don't count out the home team just yet Scully because we also have our very own versions right here in the States; there's the Spooklight of Missouri, the Bragg Road ghost light of Texas, the uber-famous Brown Mountain Lights along with the lesser well known Maco light, both of which hail from North Carolina. There's also the Gurdon Light of Arkansas and the Paulding Light in Michigan - and while they all may have different names, one thing remains irrefutably _exactly_ the same in every instance; their appearance being described as a ball of flame or light that hovers at a tantalizing distance and reportedly extinguishes itself when approached."

He clicks the slide over again where three dead bodies lay face-down in a wide swath of murky water. A man, a woman, and a teenager.

"Urban legends, folklore, and superstition typically attribute these lights to ghosts, fairies, or elemental spirits; and whichever they may turn out to be, the literature is pretty clear that their express intent is to lead wayward travelers off the beaten path and out into the swamp where they eventually succumb to death. 

"And it just so happens that Hockamock Swamp is currently experiencing an unprecedented surge of unlucky out-of-towners, five altogether over the past two weeks, including this entire family of three. All drowned in one single night. 

"And if that's not weird enough for you, all victims so far have been found face down in bodies of water with no evidence of a struggle anywhere at the scenes of their discovery or on their bodies. With some of them even having drowned in as little as four inches deep."

The mother's still wearing her fanny pack.

He cycles through a scrummage of pictures. Displaying the rest of the myriad dead. 

All of them lying face down.

"So, what do you think Scully?"

Her brain's on autopilot as she stares into the middle distance. Her scientific encyclopedia spinning around like a record just waiting for her to lower the needle.

'You mean despite the fact that these so-called phantom lights have already been scientifically explained as a form of chemiluminescence called ignis fatuus? Whereby a certain combination of chemical compounds released by decaying organic matter oxidizes with air and spontaneously ignites over large areas of concentrated methane? Which is why they're primarily found over wetlands and share the exact same description no matter where they come from in the world? And how their purported disappearances can be attributed to something as simple as air currents, where the agitation of air by nearby moving objects causes the gas to disperse and lose its luminosity? Is that what you want to hear about what I think?'

All this is what she means to say out loud. Wanting their comradery back. 

Wanting to regain the status quo.

Wanting this unbearable feeling of panic to go away.

She means to give him her scientific stipend to lay against his wild theories. As she usually does.

As she ought to do.

But when she goes to look at him and she opens her mouth, she gets a flash of the way his hot hard cock had pierced her hot soft center. The loose shape his mouth had taken when he pushed inside.

And that quixotic, half-idolizing stare he had beamed straight up at her as she had finally come.

God Mulder! YES Mulder! YES! YES!

He had been inside her.

"I think I made a mistake." 

Is what they hear her say.


	2. Chapter 2

\--  
CHAPTER TWO  
\--

**HOCKAMOCK SWAMP  
BRIDGEWATER TRIANGLE, MASSACHUSETTS**

This was his endeavor and she was made to drive.

He has the passenger's seat kicked back and his arms folded tightly over his chest. Little silver wire headphones pressed into his ears while his Walkman wails The Cramps _LOOK MOM NO HEAD!_ on repeat for about the one-thousand-and-thirteenth time. 

Blotting out any chance for discussion even though she feels no need.

She's starting to recognize the songs by their tinny, secondary soundwaves through the ambient shudder of the car and within the last forty miles she's started making up the lyrics as she goes.

It's late when they finally pull in to the Star Lite motel parking lot. Burger Baron's argon sign splashing down yellow like ambient piss in the far corner of the parking lot. Cantankerous gears gnash and groan, shaking the twilight in their effort to make the twelve-by-eighteen-foot neon burger turn slowly on its post. 

Smiling a happy, frenetic greeting down upon them in welcome.

SUMMER SPECIALS - CHICKEN CORDON BLEU BURGE - DBL FUDGE BROWNIE BOAT - CLOSE ON SUNDAY

They haven't spoken to each other since they left the basement. A whole seven hours ago.

She kills the engine and finally looks over at him. Noting uneasily that he hasn't even touched his bag of seeds.

"Can I have a kiss?"

She's in the main office checking them into adjoining rooms when the question is lobbed at her from across the counter. There's a medium-sized dinosaur in glossy black feathers blinking inquisitively back at her at the extent of its leg tie, tilting its head over to enjoy a scratch from the manager's fat fingers.

"Oh, never mind Ori. He's quite the flirt when pretty ladies come around." The manager says apologetically. "That your husband outside? If you folks are the old-fashioned type we have one with a double bed down at the end..."

A quick glance through the dirty window shows that Mulder hasn't moved a muscle. Scully wonders if he possibly could have fallen asleep.

"Can I have a kiss? Hello." Quothe the raven.

Scully smiles politely and takes their keys.

She eases the sedan into a convenient spot in front of their doors, their plastic triangle key fobs sliding along the dash and Mulder snaps up like a dead man waking, snatches the car keys out of the ignition and hustles out with the trunk opened and closed before Scully has even had time to fully step out of the car. 

His motel door slams shut behind him with his suitcase by his side.

Scully sits absolutely still with one foot outside the car while the door chimes a measured warning out into the darkening air. Her hands still on the steering wheel. Her eyes facing forward, refusing to blink. 

Refusing to take a breath.

Apparently this is how it's going to be then.

They were going to ignore each other like glowering stars and let a trillion miles of silence unspool between them.

\--

She'd had her door open to air out the room and let in the cool night breeze. Watching nothing in particular as she flipped through the six available television stations, listening to the bug zapper take another insect from off this mortal coil. Desperately craving a cigarette.

It's the only reason she'd even seen him leave. Given that he had tried to be _quiet_ when he'd shut his own door.

"Mulder." She sticks her head out, calling to his retreating form with his xenon spotlight thumping against his leg and something shiny folded up under his arm. "Where are you going?"

He's out of the parking lot and turning down the side of the road by the time she grabs her coat and catches up with him. Finally noticing that he's carrying a thermos too.

They're moving swiftly down the middle of an empty street limned in powerlines. The skeletal colossi of transmission towers standing like great Old Ones off in the distance, oblivious to the troubles of lesser beings. 

They pass a silent graveyard on their right and she tries not to take it as a sign.

She's having a hard time keeping up with the gait of his long long legs. And the quick clicking of his heels reminds her of a cantor. Like a horse bolting.

"Mulder! Will you please slow down?" She finally says, huffing at his elbow, falling back despite her focused application, huffing again. Wanting to reach out and snag at him to make him stop.

"How about you keep up?" He says instead. His tone not quite as nasty as she expected it to be.

It's the first time he's broken his vow of silence to her on this entire trip. And despite what he says, she's glad to finally hear his voice again.

She'll take what little she can get.

\--

She sits with him for hours in more oppressive night-pitched silence. A place she would come to eventually call 'his spot' as he basically sets up camp. It's a little beach of sorts surrounded by skinny trees that sits right at the edge of where a pocket of the swamp starts. Filled with just enough sediment to be solid.

The precise spot where the family of three had been found lying facedown in the water. Lined up all in a row.

Only a mere mile and a half away from the motel. From help. From life.

They don't see any lights the entire time they're out here.

\--

She decides she's going to go for a walk sometime in the late morning after getting some sleep and has her knuckles raised to the connecting door before she falters, thinking briefly back to Bellefleur, Oregon and how different the circumstances are.

She lets her arm fall back loose against her side and decides to find her tennis shoes instead. Knowing that they, at least, will not have a chance to rebuff her intentions.

The sun is about midway towards its zenith when she finally allows it the privilege to beam down upon her face and she nearly smashes the brown paper bag that's sitting rolled up in front of her door. Burger Baron's happy logo mooning up at her from the step.

Inside she finds a burger made just the way she likes it and though her appetite is crying, she doesn't have the will to eat the food. 

She manages to nibble at the two soggy pickles and a couple of cold fries before the bag lands in the trash discarded.

She spends the rest of the day on her bed watching Burger Baron's twirling burger through the gap in her curtain. Watching it move in steady, happy circles as it eternally goes nowhere.

Scully sits and wonders at just how long the bag of food could have possibly been sitting on her step.

And considers her hunger a mere triviality to whom it is she's actually starving for.

\--

It takes her until nearly nighttime to finally drum up the courage to see him.

And by then she's already nearly lost the nerve. 

He seems pale when he opens the door. Slightly sweaty.

"Mulder. Are you okay? You look ill." 

She's not at all surprised when he dodges her inquisitive palm, but she does find it hard to endure when he brushes her hand completely away.

He can't stand to even have her touch him. 

Something inside her curls up and dies. 

"It's just some indigestion." He keeps his arm crooked around his stomach, taking up so much of the doorframe she couldn't attempt to squeeze through even if she wanted to. His stomach audibly squelches, bubbling terribly. His face pinches. "Must have been something I ate."

"Have you taken anything?" She wants to know.

He ignores her question for one of his own. "Did you need something?" His tone is flat. And she feels caught out with the poor excuse for a scapegoat in the form of an ice bucket in her hand.

"No. It's nothing." There's a single lick of embarrassment before she dams it up behind her rigid self-control. Like she's been learning to do for years now. "I just came by to thank you...for the burger."

She extends the olive branch.

He looks somewhere out over the top of her head, clenching his jaw. The sizzle of neon cooking the air around them. "They gave me a second one by mistake. I didn't want it to go to waste."

Scully accepts this with quiet resignation and for once in her brand new life with him doesn't fight it. Giving him room. Even if it didn't quite adequately explain the additional french fries.

He tries to hide the grimace when the noises come again and his hand squeezes tighter around his side.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah." He says curtly, quickly. "I'm fine."

The olive branch snaps and falls to the ground.

He shuts the door in her face.


	3. Chapter 3

\--  
CHAPTER THREE  
\--

She scuffs a loose pebble into the water and watches silver ripples as they bloom against the moonlight.

They're in 'his spot' again and the stars are cold and everywhere. It's the third night in a row now. And she can feel all the planets as they fall.

"Mulder. What are we doing out here?" 

She has her head tilted back on her shoulders to look up, brushing what she thinks is a mosquito from her cheek. Treading on familiar ground out here in terra incognita.

"You can't tell me we're chasing lights because we have yet to even _see_ any."

He's got his legs canted wide with his elbows around his kneecaps, sitting on his space blanket not making a sound. For hours he'd been staring out into the shaggy darkness. Looking for a sign. His xenon spotlight blasting a futile beam into the cold black sky. His untouched thermos by his side.

He finally squints up into the darkness after it, refusing to look at her.

And she feels their familiar ground begin to slip beneath her feet, trying like hell to tip her off.

"No one's stopping you from leaving but yourself."

\--

She awakens to moaning.

It's two thirty-six in the morning and there is a loud, unabashed female moaning things like _yes_ and _oh!_ and _fuck me with your big fat cock!_ coming from Mulder's room. 

There's the amplified and repeated slaps of skin on skin. Wet sucking noises and a man's labored grunts.

Scully stares at the water stain on her ceiling that her lamp is currently spotlighting and shuts her eyes only to see its negative. Letting out a long metered breath through her nose.

_Oh fuck me. oh fuck me! OH! Deeper!_

She rolls over and wraps the pillow around her head in vain. Still able to hear everything through the cheap cotton batting.

_yeah like that! give it to me deep! oh gimme your big fat co-_

She is swimming in her dark blue silk pajamas foxed with big white blushing orchids as she finds herself at the connecting door. The cross around her neck glinting just as brightly as her eyes.

"Mulder!" She slaps at the flimsy wood.

He only turns the volume up.

The skin on skin slapping gets louder. The grunting more intense. _OH YES FUCK YES LIKE THAT OH OH OH FUUUU-_

Mulder's telephone rings.

And immediately the volume comes down.

\--

It's six oh seven in the morning and she hasn't had a wink.

She hears his telephone ring while she's staring at his wall, trying her hardest to see through it. To see what he's doing. She hears the dark familiar timbre of his voice as he talks and the pause as someone else answers back. She waits for him to come to her and tamps down the fear that he won't with everything she's got.

She's concentrating so hard on pushing the predetermined pain away that when he finally does knock, it startles her.

She shoves back the covers and plods to the front door, tucking her hair behind her ear and deliberately taking off the chain.

"There's been another one. Body's already at the morgue." He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be more interested in her gut-encrusted bug zapper.

She nods without saying a word. Seeing he's already dressed.

He looks like shit.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new year. have two.

\--  
CHAPTER FOUR  
\--

He stays back against the stainless steel cupboards with his hands in his coat pockets as the diener and the body come wheeling in. Neither of them mention how much he's relying on the wall to keep him upright. Or the dark wetness in his hairline. Or how sallow his pallor his. Which looks especially ghastly in the harsh caste of the sodium vapor brilliance.

He's a spectral spectator visiting her world now. Hospital sterile and silver white sharp around them. With the quintessential glossy sheen of the seafoam tiled walls.

She has no idea he's speaking until the rotary saw is set aside and she's folding back the butterfly she's made of the deceased's ribcage. Exposing the squirming mass of tv dinner organs.

He's essentially talking at her and in effect talking to no one at all.

"--there's got to be a pretty cruel irony to life when you're given all the evolutionary advancements of the human body, millions of years of genetic tinkering to make us the apex predator at the very top of the food chain and yet all our means of taking in air is compartmentalized into one little tiny exploitable area on our faces..." he muses. 

Very pointedly keeping his eyes away from what she's doing. 

"I guess what they say is true then." He says with the same dryness as his lips appear to be. "Life's a bitch and then you die.

Shrugging, he lurches up onto his feet, swaying once and throwing out a steadying hand, letting the other fold as easily as a petal over his belly where it's come to live as the squelching grows loud.

Mulder's doing like he always does. Coming to his own conclusions. Finding answers to the questions that nobody's even thought to ask. 

"Jesus Christ I'm thirsty. I'll be at the motel."

He makes for the door. 

She fights the urge to turn and watch him go with every iota she has, staring down into the chest cavity through the misty fog of her safety goggles.

Whether he does it on purpose or not, he leaves the car keys behind. 

She jams her thumb into the record button while needles prickle at the top of her nose and she shakes her head viciously against a piece of hair that had the bad luck to fall loose from her cap. Convincing herself it has nothing to do with the tears.

She will not cry.

She _will not_ cry.

"The time is 6:42 a.m. The deceased is a white female, age thirty-seven. Probable cause of death is drow--drowning..." 

She falters, chides herself and picks it back up. Resolute. In control.

"I'll begin with a dissection of the heart..."

The dictaphone is the only witness to the way her voice shakes.

He had been inside her. 

\--

The autopsy takes her three hours to perform and turns up very little. Not much beyond what she already expected to find. There was foam in the deceased's nose; indicative of water aspiration, but what has Scully the most beguiled is the fact that she found absolutely no water in either the deceased's stomach or lungs. Despite clear evidence. Which meant that there was a cause but not an effect. Smoke with no fire.

The unusual atrophy of the deceased's legs was explained away in a phone call. She had been on a solo road trip in her converted minivan. Five years after a car accident had crippled her from the waist down. She'd ended up staying just a little bit up the road from Star Lite at another motel. One a little closer to town. The one where she'd been ultimately found.

Scully wants the chance to take a look at the motel room for herself before all the evidence is cleared away. At least, that's what she tells herself. It's for science. It's for the truth. Following leads.

It had absolutely nothing at all to do with avoiding Mulder.

She flashes her badge at the motel's front desk and relives a strange sort of deja-vu when she spies the three-legged iguana curled up asleep in a dog bed on the counter.

In the deceased's bedroom there's a sliding board across the toilet lid, a foldable bench seat in the shower, and a decent cath supply in the waterproof bag she finds. Clearly ready to face tomorrow.

She'd not been suicidal; according to her mother. Was still active in her social circles. Had started dating someone new.

The road trip had been a gift to herself. As a way to celebrate overcoming adversities in her life. Only to end by being found face-down in a filled-up sink by the cleaning staff.

Scully snaps on a prophylactic and runs her finger around the underside cap of the drain, looking for something, but coming up with nothing. Swearing she's on the right track.

The MO is right but the method is wrong as it appears that the deceased's death had been voluntary. There had been no bruises or markings on the back of her neck. Nor signs around the area to indicate a struggle.

And she'd been too far away to follow the lights.

A voluntary death seemingly made out of her control.

And then Scully sees it. 

Crumpled up in the trashcan smiling up at her amidst all the empty water bottles.

Forming a terrible conclusion.


	5. Chapter 5

\--  
CHAPTER FIVE  
\--

"Mulder?"

She knocks on the outside door that she knows is locked with more urgency than caution. Not all that certain of what she's going to find inside. 

She can hear water running. Which has her terrified.

"Mulder. I'm coming in." He gets one warning.

She's not proud about lying, but the manager and his schmoozy raven seemed to have taken her story about her 'husband' losing the key to his room fairly well.

She finds him in the bathroom propped over the sink with his arms bolted into the counter and his shoulders way up by his ears. The sink taps are going full blast. Both the hot and the cold flowing free.

Out in the main room he'd shrugged off his coat and flung off his tie and she can see the inkblot of a dark sweat stain as it permeates his spine. His shoes and socks have been discarded as well. Must've gotten too hot and blistered to keep them all on.

A large Burger Baron drink cup is crooked into the sink basin, overflowing with water before it's even full. He snatches it out and slugs it down just as soon as it starts to spill out. Slopping it everywhere. Letting rivulets run down his neck to soak into his collar. The front of his shirt is already drenched. Skinned across the wide expanse of his chest.

But it doesn't appear to be enough.

Tossing the cup onto the ground, he shoves his face into the stream. Slurping and gasping. Trying to drink it dry. Even putting his mouth up against the faucet head and sucking it straight from the source, almost choking as he does.

"Mulder?"

He spins around, mopping at his face with the back of his hand, caught out by utter surprise. And the momentary look of naked vulnerability that flickers across his gorgeous face at seeing her see him like this is enough to make Scully gasp until it slams shut.

"Leave me alone Scully." He brushes past her and goes out into the main room. Not wanting to be hemmed in.

She won't be so easily thwarted. Shutting off the taps. Hearing the reassuring suck of the drain. 

"Mulder, listen to me."

He's already out the door making his way across the parking lot, intent on going somewhere. Anywhere. Away from her. Barefoot and walking as fast as wobbly legs will carry him. 

Scully on his heels.

"Mulder! Stop!"

He spins. The vein beside his red eyes throbbing. His hand crawling across his stomach in the same way it's been doing for too long now.

"I don't want to talk to you right now Scully."

"Well then just listen to me!"

"No!"

He's turned back around and stomping across the asphalt. Burger Baron's burger twists indifferently around on its beefy perch to watch them. Scully thinks she can see the curtain flutter in the manager's window as they make it out onto the pavement of the street.

Her stubbornness is bridled, her intentions are inflamed. Her coattails kick up against the back of her ankles as she runs. "Mulder you're sick--"

"Yeah. That's the reigning theory isn't it?" He snarls. "Pathetic crazy 'Spooky' Mulder sick in the head and everybody knows it! Admit it Scully! That's what it's been about this entire time!"

Scully is suddenly very confused.

"I get it Scully. You didn't sign up for this." 

She's shocked into stillness for a moment as she gets the idea of what he's talking about, but his quickly retreating form spurs her on.

"I didn't sign up for anything Mulder--"

"No, that's right." He spits back. "You were _assigned_. How could I forget? They saddled you with me. They thought that they could use you to try and reign me in. To shut me down. Put an end to my work and the X-Files in one fell swoop, isn't that right? Break me over their knee while they just sat back and watched it all go according to plan. Tell me I'm right Scully. Tell me that I'm just some sorry son of a bitch stuck down in the basement chasing after monsters and aliens and a bunch of other garbage and they just couldn't have that anymore! Could they? Somebody not playing by _their_ rules. That's why they wanted me gone, right? 

"And you bought it Scully oho! hook line and sinker you bought it. They saw your wet-behind-the-ears eager-to-please gullibility and took full advantage. Poor naive Special Agent Dana Scully fresh out of Quantico. Shackled to a crackpot for a partner. Must be a real drag. Is that why you slept with me Scully huh? Because you felt _sorry_ for me? Must make you feel really good to know that you got another notch in your bedpost with the FBI's bonafide monster boy. Something new to talk about around the water cooler right? I have to admit it, you really had me going there for a little while."

"Mulder, it's not like that." She tries but it comes out too quietly, too shocked to carry any volume so he doesn't hear her. He's feeling sorry for himself and his feet are leaving blood prints now on the gray uneven pavement as they divert off onto the little dirt trail.

"You know what? In all honesty, I'm actually surprised you made it as far as you did and if you want a transfer after this Scully. I won't stop you. I have no problem signing the damn paper. But I do want to know one thing before you leave..."

They come to a stop. They're standing in 'his spot' now. Standing on the space blanket he's just decided to leave there. The xenon spotlight still on and glowing, orphaned since last night. 

She puts herself between him and the water and he stares at her with blazing, wild eyes.

"Was it worth it?"

His voice cracks. Turning his face away when the tears start flowing down his cheeks. Unable to look at her. Trying to choke it back. "Did you get what you wanted out of the deal?"

He's a man on the verge of crumbling into pieces.

"Mulder listen to me."

It's not an answer to the question that he's looking for. He wants something to flagellate himself with. So he goes on. Beseeching her for an answer.

"You wanna know what the worst part about the whole thing is though Scully?" He asks huskily. His face an absolute wreck as he licks at his raw and flakey lips. "The thing that really kills me? Is that it worked!

"They used you against me in a way that they didn't even ..that _I_ didn't even know they could and like the goddamned useful idiot I am, I fell in love with you and look where--"

Scully gasps and Mulder's voice breaks off when a terribly violent gurgle erupts from his midsection, slicing through his speech just as swiftly as a knife blade.

He doubles over, crying out. Nearly falling to his knees. Scully can barely hold him up when she throws her arms out, grunting beneath the sudden weight of him. Sweat drips off his hairline and dribbles onto her arm. Or maybe they're his tears.

Eventually he staggers back to his feet, swallowing and fighting not to sway, the blanket crinkling beneath them. Sticking to his feet. 

He looks out at the dark still water with a frightful hunger in his eyes.

"God. I'm so thirsty." He swallows his parched throat, beginning to move past her. "I need a drink."

"Mulder wait." Scully bunches her fists in his dress shirt, trying to hold him back. Knowing with certainty what he's planning to do even if he doesn't.

She plants her feet into the soft wet ground, but their sizes are too uneven. Their strengths are too mismatched. She can feel her shoes slide backward in the muck and get stuck there. Shlocking with thick noises as she tries in vain to pull them free. Her stacked heels embedding themselves as though they were anchors.

Her hampering of his forward progress is making him mad, she can see it in his eyes. He NEEDS to get to the water. He needs a drink. Driven by an unknown force.

"Wouldjyu just get out of the way Scully?!" He demands, taking hold of both of her wrists now, trying to dislodge them from the front of his shoulders.

And that only makes her push back harder. Driving her knuckles into his muscles. Wanting to hurt him physically to snap him out of this. Feeling the terrible slosh of swamp water as it pours into the backs of her shoes.

She's losing ground against him.

"Mulder STOP! STOP IT!" She risks reeling back and punching at his chest, keeping her thumb out of her fists like she was taught. Trying to shock him. Trying to wake him from this shared nightmare.

He scrabbles at her pummeling hands and catches them up, throwing her off to the side by wrenching her off balance and she comes clean out of her shoes, striking her head on a skinny white cedar that until now had stood innocuously by in company. 

Somewhere behind the tumbling gray confusion of her pain, she hears him splash into the water.


	6. Chapter 6

\--  
CHAPTER SIX  
\--

She doesn't know how long she's out for, she only knows she must get to her feet.

Rising, swaying slightly, she staggers and braces herself against the offending tree, touching the spot on her head where she had struck under her hair. Her fingers coming away bloody.

There was something she was supposed to be doing. A task that had once been very important that she had been in the middle of. And she needs to remember it now.

Then she does.

"MULDER!" 

Her eyes fly wild over the water and she spots the pale scrap of him amid the dark plant debris.

Having swum out a ways to get out of her reach.

Floating facedown.

"NO!!" Scully shrieks, ripping off her coat, then she's in the water too. Her arms slapping huge riptides through the heavy liquid, feeling like she's moving through black oil. Her waterlogged clothes are impossibly heavy and the underwater weeds are trying to pull her down.

She's too slow. It's taking too long to reach him. 

He can't die. 

He can't be dead.

He had been inside her.

After an eternity, she finally reaches him, sucking in air and choking on muck. His arms are floating loose out to his sides. He's not trying to pick up his head. There are no signs of bubbles.

A terrible animal guttural sound escapes her throat as she wraps her arm around his chest, kicking herself up with all her strength, shaking him backwards to flop his face out of the water. His head crashes into her head and she fails to notice the pain or the blood when it comes seeping out of her nose. 

The wet kelp of her hair is plastered to her face, blinding her choking her as she claws their way back towards the shore. Treading water gracelessly.

She spits out water, getting him up onto the shore as far as she can, scrabbling at his sodden shirt and breaking her fingernails as she heaves. His waist and legs are still below the waterline, but it's enough to get him stretched out on his back. 

She crashes down on her knees beside him, ripping her pants on a buried piece of driftwood. Fighting to get her gasping breaths back under control. Needing to listen as she puts her ear to his chest.

She hears no heartbeat. He's not breathing either.

The once startling pink of his impossible lips have now turned a faint and terrible blue.

She puts her right fist where she's supposed to, heel in the center of the chest. Curling fingers in between her other fingers, she starts pushing down hard and fast. Two pushes every second. Keeping her elbows locked. Feeling his ribcage squeeze.

"Don't do this!"

She tips his head back after one-hundred-and-twenty, sweeping his tongue to the side, hooking out bits of plantlife and casting them to the ground. Pinching his nose closed. There are tears mixing in with the blood and dirty water on her face. There's the silty earthy vegetable taste of mud in her mouth as it closes over his.

She breathes into him twice. Watching his big chest obstinately rise.

She goes back to compressing his heart in a well-timed fury. Willing it to beat again. Demanding it to work.

She slaps him hard across the face in anger. His head whips sideways but nothing happens. Her panic starts to mushroom.

"Mulder! Damnit! DON'T LEAVE ME!" She hears herself yell and then _feels_ the hollow crack of some of his ribs as they shift down trying to break away from his sternum and another terrible sob comes tearing out from the depths of her soul as she's forced to keep pushing. Keep compressing. Unwilling to stop even if they should fracture apart under her hands.

He had fallen in love with her.

He has to live.

She tips his head back again and pinches his nose closed while the muscles in her arms shake with an internal fire.

And in one blessed moment of answered prayers; he's given back to her.

Summoned back to life.

Caught off guard, too late to pull away, he vomits all the water he's swallowed directly up into her mouth.

And of all the terrible sensations that Scully has experienced in her life up until now. In all the pain she's ever endured and all the uncomfortable predicaments she's ever been involved in, nothing can prepare her for the precise moment when something in that regurgitated water begins to _**WRITHE**_.

Scully's eyes bug open as she rolls away, inadvertently pulling Mulder by his head onto his side. 

She vomits out a tangle of twisting black animals that wriggle and convulse as they're disgorged. Too dark and skinny to be ordinary worms, too volute and long to be leeches. 

She suppresses the urge to gag, spitting and wiping viciously at her mouth in horror.

And even though every fiber of her being is demanding her to crush these foreign invaders into oblivion under her heel, the carefully honed reason of her scientific mind hovers in and makes her look for something to collect them in. 

She needs evidence.

Looking up, she sees it immediately.

Unscrewing the cap and dashing out what's left of the cold coffee in the thermos, she picks up a couple of the heinous things and stuffs them unceremoniously inside while they continue to squirm. Closing the lid.

Satisfying herself, she smashes the rest into the ground with the unrelenting metal bottom of the thermos. Until they're nothing left but a greasy smear for the rain to wash away.

She's staring at the mess, collecting herself and her sanity in the rapid-fire comprehension of everything that had just happened when she finally hears him groaning mere inches away.

It's a pathetically wet sound that makes her scoot towards him protectively. Suddenly alarmed, she plunges her first two fingers into his loose warm mouth and makes sure to sweep all the places around his teeth and under his tongue.

He gags when she reaches in too far and a little more water comes out.

Thankfully, she finds no trespassers.

"Mulder?" She whimpers, pulling back. Soaked to the bone and instantly shivering as cold shock begins to set in. She puts her hand on his arm, shaking him a little.

He's heavy and wet, barely conscious and limp. Dirty water still trickles down his dirty face from the corner of his lips, his nose, and his hair. He lets out a weak muddy cough and impossibly purges out more water. Making a pitiable noise.

"Hang on." She says, more to herself. Trying to get her numbed feet underneath her as she gets up again. She hooks her elbows beneath his armpits and takes a steadying breath. Remembering at the last minute to use her legs.

If she can drag him to the space blanket it may be easier to move him if she has to drag him down the street. Because trying to move him now is taking every ounce of willpower she has left.

She's heaving. Straining every muscle as hard as she possibly can and is only able to move him at a glacial pace. 

It takes her ages, grunting and slipping, but eventually bawls triumph as she's finally able to get him onto the silver square and collapses onto her backside. Every muscle in her body is screaming. 

She's drained, dizzy, and unable to go on. The soles of her feet scraped to pieces.

All she wants to do is lie down.

But she needs to get him out of here. She needs to get Mulder to help. She rallies herself.

For him.

She takes control of her unwilling body and turns him once again into recovery position. He continues to cough weakly, moaning what might be her name.

"It's okay.You're okay. I'm going to get you out of here." She soothes. Mopping back his hair with a hand that barely works. Snatching around for her discarded coat and throwing it over him. She kisses his forehead, new tears springing forth at the warmth of his reawakened skin and she sets her cheek against him for just a moment, panting out the fire in her lungs. Closing her eyes in exhaustion. Huddled around him.

In a minute she'll get up.

Once she catches her breath and makes sure he's stable.

And then after that minute she'll go find help.

And they'll get out of here forever.


	7. Chapter 7

\--  
CHAPTER SEVEN  
\--

She's sitting at his bedside in the hospital when he comes awake. Making a small, uncomfortable noise in his throat as he does so. The whole time he'd been unconscious she's been touching him; stroking his hair, holding his hand. But now that he's awake she takes her hands away.

She doesn't know if she holds the rights to touch him anymore.

She watches him get an idea of where he is from the beeping machinery then becomes extra wary when he turns his head to find her. That distant memory of wanting to flee at their office door reverberating when they lock eyes. 

That damned morning that had started it all.

His eyelids are droopy. His throat clicking dry. 

"Mm. Water." He whispers hoarsely and she dutifully provides the straw to his mouth, pulling it away before he's ready. 

"More."

She shakes her head, telling him with her eyes. You need to wait until we're sure you can keep that down.

He nods in understanding and momentarily falls back asleep. When he pops back awake again a few moments later he does the same things all over. Looking around the room. Locking onto her again. He seems to recognize her more clearly this time.

When he finally drums up enough effort to speak a whole sentence, it cuts her in half.

"What's a woman like you doing in a place like this?" 

It's scratchy and sore and just the right resonance to shatter the carefully crafted facade she'd been building in preparation for this moment. The sharp bark of a laugh is snatched out of her throat and after a tear makes a breakaway down her cheek.

"Apologizing." She says finally, flicking the tear away.

"Apologizing for what?"

She turns back to him, frowning. The cracks gaining space. "You know what."

"I know what."

"I messed this up Mulder." She says, her voice going high and trying to rupture at the seams. "I messed this up big time." Her beautiful face crumpling into a disaster as she tries to fight.

He tries to shush her. To reach out and sooth. But his bruised ribs make him choke on a gasp of sheer pain and she scoots forward instead in her seat to come to him. Her hands hovering, but not touching down. Feeling rotten and guilty for everything he's going through.

"You saved my life Scully." He reasons quietly once the pain subsides. "It can't be that bad."

"Oh Mulder." She whimpers with her hands finally settled on the bedrails. Her words cracking and popping with accumulated phlegm. Laughing with no humor. "Will you please stop being so magnanimous?"

"I can try." He smiles and seems pleased when it's almost reflected.

Knowing he's thirsty, she gives him a bit more to drink, but her bedside manner is working against her and brings things she doesn't want into focus.

He pulls back from the straw, suddenly very concerned. "Jesus Scully. What happened to your eye?"

She turns away, the hot sucking burn of the reservoir of tears filling up again, threatening to overflow and she gasps sharply to stop their coming.

It's a harmless question really.

But one she feels she will have to answer over and over like a penance for her sins. It happens every time a new doctor or a new nurse or a new person comes to talk to her. Wanting to know what happened. How she got it. Opening up fresh wounds to the air.

What hurts her the most is knowing how actually trivial it is when compared to all the rest.

She had only really looked at the burst blood vessel once in the mirror on one of her infrequent trips to the bathroom between phone calls. The blotch of solid angry red nestled right against the muzzy blue of her eye.

She likened it to a badge of guilt on display. A mark to wear like a scarlet letter.

Scully turns back to him, having regained control. "I got it. Pulling you out of the water."

"Oh." He nods, going quiet for a while.

That treacherous silence tumbles down on them suddenly, expanding between them again. Trying to shove them apart.

There's so much she wants to say. So much she wants to atone for.

She wants to explain herself and nearly gets the courage up to do so, "Mulder--" until.

"What the hell happened to me out there Scully?" He asks, catching back her eyes. He's offering her the more comfortable of the topics to talk about and she knows it, suddenly realizing that he may be just as terrified as she is.

Very soon they'll have to address it though. That's the only way they'll be able to move on.

He had been inside her.

"You were infected with parasites." She says simply.

"Really?" He reacts, almost in awe. Seeing her reach for something next to his water pitcher that he hadn't seen before. "Do you know what kind?"

She picks up a small jar and holds it from the top so he can see it through the bottom. They're long, thin cylindrical insects that in death are balled up into a big fat knot floating in formaldehyde. Appearing as harmless as an abandoned shoestring. To anyone who didn't know better.

"The closest I've come to having them identified is something called a 'horsehair worm'. The local entomologist I called says that they're usually classified as nematomorpha, which are similar to nematodes. And he assured me that except for this very singular case, typical horsehair worms have only been known to exclusively parasitize other insects, such as crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, and the like. 

"These ones, however, appear to be an anomaly of the insect kingdom and have somehow evolved to parasitize larger hosts. Even going so far as to develop an egg cyst that's impervious to human stomach acid. And based on the research I was able to do while you were resting, it's my theory that once these particular 'super worms' reach the proximal small intestine, they latch onto the side of the organ and absorb the available nutrients, enabling them to grow into a fully mature adult in a matter of thirty-six hours, which would explain why you were feeling so ill so quickly. 

"It's also my theory that when the adult form is then achieved, the super worm - behaving as its more-innocuous counterpart does - somehow _persuades_ its host to go to a water source and drown itself so that it can swim free out of the relaxed digestive tract, whereby it can then lay its eggs in the water for the purpose of becoming ingested by another animal to start the cycle anew." 

He watches in fascination as she puts the jar back down. "Wow. So I was being controlled by a bug?" 

"It would seem that way."

She wipes surreptitiously at her reddened nose. Picking apart her tissue.

He purses his lips. "Even you have to admit Scully, from a scientific standpoint, that's pretty freaky deaky." He says with a little bit of disgust and a little bit of pride at having been an actual X-File for a little while. "How do you think it got in me?"

This was what she's been wanting to tell him since the shore. "The evidence is still being gathered, but I believe that either the eggs or the larvae were in the hamburger you ate."

"What! From Burger Baron? What makes you think that?"

"The last drowning victim that I autopsied? She was wheelchair-bound Mulder. Taking a road trip. She drowned herself in her own bathroom sink a few miles down the road from us by plugging the drain and I didn't make the connection until I saw the Burger Baron bag thrown away in her trash next to a bottle of Mylanta. She must've stopped by to get a burger and began to immediately feel sick the way you did."

He hums. "That would explain why it was only happening to tourists. What did Burger Baron's owner have to say?"

"According to him, he had just recently signed a new contract three weeks ago to get his hamburger from a small organic meat distributor based out of Vermont and as of yesterday morning, both Sweet Meat Organics and Burger Baron are closed until further notice pending an investigation by both the FDA and the EPA."

Mulder lets his head fall back into the pillow. Taking it all in.

"So..." he sighs after a minute or two, his thumb moving on the bed. "It wasn't the lights?"

She frowns at him with a bit of pity, shaking her head. "No. It wasn't the lights."

There's that silence again. Creeping in like the cold.

Mulder closes his eyes as if absorbing it all, then, letting out a heavy breath through his nose, he begins to look around for something. Licking lips that are shiny with vaseline. "Scully? Will you help me find the thing? The one that lifts the bed?"

"Why?" She asks cautiously, not sure it's a good idea.

"Because we're about to have the conversation I don't want to have and I want to at least have the dignity of being able to sit up for it."

Warily, she hands over the controls and can only watch as his torso begins to rise with a mechanical whir. The jolted stopping and starting seem to be the worst of it and she's just about to say something when he finally stops at a respectable incline. There's a fresh sheen of sweat on his brow and upper lip and his breath is coming quick and shallow.

She lets him take his time to pull himself together, looking down and noticing with a stab to the heart that he's deliberately turned his hand over and his fingers are seeking for her touch like a diviner. Wiggling in the air.

She tips her chin up at the invitation, as though it might keep her eyes from overflowing as she takes his hand.

Needing to reciprocate in some small way, she picks up his drink. "Here." Putting it to his lips, she lets him drink more of the water than she probably should. Letting him finish it.

The rehydration seems to bolster him and he's able to focus again. Making sure he's got her eyes.

"I don't blame you if you want to leave the X-Files Scully. You have to know that I wouldn't hold it against you." He says and the way he's staring at her squarely makes her feel like he's boring holes through her. With both his conviction and his eyes.

Not willing to run away anymore, Scully shifts in the chair.

It's time for her to finally explain herself as best she can. To face this like a responsible woman and partner.

After all, it was she who'd invited him into her body after he had invited her into his life.

"I don't want to leave Mulder. Not unless you want me to go."

"No." He says, shaking his head as much as he dares. "No. I'd like you to stay. For as long as you want to."

She smiles shyly and squeezes his hand, having made it over the first hurdle.

She has to take a deep breath for a second.

"Mulder, I want you to know that back at the office, when I said what I said that morning about what we did being a mistake...I-- I meant it." She sees his face fall slightly, but presses on, needing him to know. "But that's only because I had betrayed a promise that I had made to myself. That I wouldn't get involved with someone I worked with.

"But then after everything that happened; after losing my father and nearly losing you, after the Kindred and Jack, I lost sight of myself and my convictions and when I look back at what I've done, I can only think that I was just trying to prove something to myself."

"What were you trying to prove?" He asks cautiously.

"That it wouldn't change anything between us. That we could simply carry on being partners."

"Can we?"

"I don't know." She says helplessly, honestly. "I hope so. 

"But one thing I do know is that I can't have it be a one time thing Mulder. I'm...I'm just ...not _that_ type of person. I can't do that to you and I don't want to do it to me."

He thinks about this confession silently, his face betraying nothing except for the little crinkle of skin above his eyebrows until his eyes eventually slide sideways. Away from her.

"If it makes it any better Scully, we can pretend like it never happened."

Her mouth comes open a bit in bewilderment at this offer and his gaze goes intense as it focuses straight forward on the end of the room. At the door as though he pictures himself walking through it.

His thumb starts rubbing nervously against her. "I mean, it's not like it was consummated or anything so...if that's what you felt was right...I'd-I'd be okay with that I think." He mumbles quickly. Letting it all out in one breath.

But from the pinch in his face, he's not okay with it.

And she doesn't understand. "What are you trying to say?"

It's her turn to search out his eyes. Squeezing his knuckles to make him come back to her. "Mulder?"

"Look, don't take this the wrong way, but I didn't exactly ... _finish_... when we..."

She can see the turmoil on his face and her confusion deepens. "Why?"

"It wasn't on purpose." He huffs in frustration. Grimacing. "I just...couldn't. I got cold feet. I'm not happy about it. I mean, Jesus Christ Scully, you practically threw yourself at me. You caught me off guard...I didn't know if you really wanted me or if you were just...upset and I was just...there...and then you left. I mean wuh-what the hell am I supposed to think? You ran off when your part was over without even talking to me..."

He stares at her in hunted bewilderment.

"Do you even know that you didn't make a single sound the whole time you were on top of me?" 

"I didn't?" She squeaks, trying to remember.

"No. You just had this look on your face like you were a million miles away. It's like you were possessed."

It breaks her decorum to see a stark truth mirrored back at her. And she rationalizes that all her enjoyment must have been soley in her head.

Her face catches fire as she sinks fully back into her chair, no longer able to sit up on the edge with a formidable posture. Though she doesn't let go of his hand.

"I'm sorry Mulder." She says finally, feeling the full force of the wreckage she's become as of late. "I never intended to treat you that way. You're my best friend and I--"

She sniffs sharply under the brand new onslaught of tears, a heavy rush that tips the scale and Mulder very clearly regrets saying anything. His hand is pulling at her, wanting her with him.

"Scully c'mere." 

She shakes her head quickly, making a sad little noise in her mouth as she shrinks away, but his insistence wins out. "Will you please just come here?"

As pathetic as she feels right now, she can't deny his offer of comfort and soon has her face pressed into his pillow by his head as she keens tragically. Her top half lying as close to him as she dares, careful of his leads.

His hand still laced in hers.

"I don't regret it Scully." He whispers sympathetically, pressing his nose to the crown of her head. "Not any of it for a second and I don't want you to either."

And it is then, when he bends their linked arms up in the imitation of a hug and puts a gentle kiss into her hair that her levee finally breaks and he's there to watch over her as she bawls like a babe until she sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating goes up next weekend... ;}


	8. Chapter 8

\--  
CHAPTER EIGHT - EPILOGUE  
\--

**MULDER'S APARTMENT  
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA**

It's been weeks since the hospital and they're already back at work facing down the dogged complexities of the next case. She's hovering. Having recently left a tormented Mulder standing in the middle of a murder scene that had taken place in his mentor's bedroom.

Committed while both men had been on the phone.

Scully pauses with her knuckles raised to the door. 

It's late to the point of being nearly dawn now, but she hasn't been able to get any sleep after what happened tonight. The persistent memory of Mulder's vexation had been enough to keep her up and in her restlessness she'd gone for a drive, finding herself here. Drawn back to him like true North.

She wonders if this is crossing a line.

Blowing out a steadying breath, she knocks at the door with the gold 42 and then fidgets back and forth on her heels.

It takes him a minute, but in the silence of the hallway she can hear him shuffling. His feet padding over the floorboards and the unmistakable rustle of fabric being hastily thrown on. 

"Who is it?"

"Mulder. It's me."

He's missing his shoes, socks his belt and his tie, but his dress pants are still holding their crease from this morning and while he has enough buttons to technically be decent, they're all entirely offset. Allowing Scully to see quite a bit of the muscled slope of his shoulder and a tantalizing glimpse of his belly. 

His hair has been mussed into a loose dark star from the wrath of his fingers and she can't recall in all their partnership ever seeing him so untidy.

He visibly swallows to see her standing there, but is polite enough to feign casualty. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I went for a drive and...I was in the neighborhood and thought you could use some company." 

Ha.

It sounds even more ridiculous when she says it out loud.

"Alexandria's a long ways away from Annapolis Scully." He points out without smiling.

By a whole state in fact.

"Yes. Well," she's caught, feeling culpable, blushing as she puts a lock of hair behind her ear. Relieved when he finally holds back the door.

"Come in."

She takes a look around at his cool dark apartment lit only by the fish tank light and slatted streetlight shine, noticing that it hasn't changed much since the last time she was here. 

Her eyes glance perilously off the green couch. Pretending to forget for now.

There's a thick soft Indian blanket crumpled over the leather from where it had fallen and she glances back at him to where he stands in the shadows. Unwilling to come into the light. "Did I wake you?"

"No. I don't sleep much...ever, actually. I was just thinking." He gathers it up and sets the wad to the side to give her a spot. "Here. Sit. It's the best seat in the house." 

Probably because it was the only one.

The leather is warm and croaks hello at her memory. She can feel the heat rise to her cheeks before she pushes it away.

When he finally deigns to sit down too, rounding the coffee table, he's at the other end and his heel is tapping nervously against the floor. Fingers worrying his bottom lip while her own worries her thumb. Both of them searching for something to say.

"Mulder." She says, right out of the blue of her eyes. "I'm sorry about what happened to Reggie."

His brow creases down. "Uh, yeah...thanks." 

She sees his jaw clench and he jumps up like she poked him, only to stop mid-step with a hand to his chest and a stalled out breath, closing his eyes. Stung into stillness by pain as he went for the window to hide.

Though he had been cleared for field duty a week ago, Scully suspects that his release had been falsely charmed out of the female EAC a little bit sooner than it should have been.

And Lord help her she knows that the rumors were true; that Spooky Mulder with the pretty face could've charmed the cross-dressing panties off of Hoover himself if only he'd been around long enough to see him smile.

But he's certainly not doing that now.

"This is nothing Scully." He attempts in an unconvincing grit as she stares. "You should have seen me the other day when I sneezed."

It's a bad deflection, even if it might be true and despite his noble attempts at a solid front, she's there by his side. Watching him hold it together for as long as he possibly can, until she gently pulls the blanket over his shoulders and closes the edges together into a cocoon. Veiling all his wounds. Looking up into his tragic eyes. Hearing him sniff. Tilting on the edge of grief.

She goes on. "I know he was important to you. And I may not have gotten to know him as well as I would have liked, but I do know that he respected you."

"Scullee." He mewls as his face scrunches up and she takes on the full weight of his sorrow.

"I'm sorry Mulder. I'm sorry." She soothes him and rocks him and presses gently against his temple. Waiting for the upheaval to subside.

He's much more silent in his fury than she had been the other day and when the end comes it's heralded by a hiccup and a soft, washed-out sigh. His arms slung heavily around her waist. His forehead pressed against her shoulder. A bevy of tears soaked into her coat collar.

She kisses him on the side of his chin. Leaving her lips there as she lets one of her hands move to his highest button. Her nail clicking against the tiny plastic. Waiting with bated breath to see his reaction.

It takes him a long moment to learn.

And she feels him go cautiously still.

"Scully?" He whispers.

"I don't think you should be alone tonight." 

He huffs humorlessly. "I'm always alone." 

"But you aren't anymore." 

She goes slowly, watching the first button slip free. Breathing in the faint crispness of his aftershave.

"I want to do this right Mulder. For the both of us. And if it's something you want too, I-- I'd like for you to tell me." She confesses against the flute of his collar bone.

"Yes. I do. I want this." He squeezes her elbow. "I'd like to try again."

Within a few fragile moments his shirt and pants are on the floor and she's staring down the long expanse of his naked torso, overwhelmed by the need to lean in and press her lips to the center of his sternum. To the small patch of hair there. Reassured by the steady molten thump of his heart still beating away. 

Feeling it lope a little faster at her touch.

The one she'd brought back to life not so long ago.

Mulder presses a kiss into the seam of her hair and she picks her face up to meet it, finding his eager, pliable mouth at the same moment she toes off her shoes and he follows her down as she loses inches. 

She hears the blanket goes hissing to the floor and his large hands begin eeking into the edges of her own clothing, wanting her peeled bare too.

Keeping their lips locked and twisted, they work together to strip off what remains of her encumbering clothes. Exposing the soft brightness she possesses underneath to the subtle gloam of his apartment. Limning all her soft edges in green.

There's the muscled reeds of her arms, the slim softness of her belly, there's the camber of her hips, the moon of her buttocks, and finally the elegant straps of her white upper thighs. 

They break for air only because they have to, neither of them bothering to notice that she's still wearing her black sheer ankle hose when it's all said and done.

Forehead to forehead and breathing heavily, he caresses her with his touch the way sunshine caresses a meadow. The way starlight caresses ether. Finite, yet unbounded as he trips along her skin. As his strokes leave simmering trails with soft abandon and seek for more. 

He is stubbled and salty and cranes like a sunflower. The exquisite bloom of a man. 

Scully stiffens slightly when she can't quite remember what underwear she's wearing, but relaxes when she recalls that it's the best of what she has; simple black cotton and a matching bra. A better option than the plain nude set she'd incidentally shown him before. 

She'll have to look into getting more appropriate kinds if this is something that they're going to be doing regularly.

But at least Mulder doesn't seem to mind.

He's tenting his boxer briefs at the prospect of having her, bringing his chin forward again, finding her mouth. Making pleasant little noises as he washes her over with his hands and his breath and his sound.

She edges into his waistband, finding the heavy shaft of him there. A bomb of wetness suddenly detonating inside her when she wraps her hand around it and he grunts into her mouth. Making her core go instantly soft with envy.

He's slightly bigger than her fingers can encircle and two lengths larger than the size of her palm. An impressively large but not terrifying size, now that she recalls it being stuffed up inside her. Remembering vividly how she'd been sore but not torn.

He's full velvet steel meted out in a comfortable heft. About as damnably perfect as the rest of him. So she gives him one desultory stroke in appreciation and he bites at her with a hunger so hard it makes their teeth click together. Her hands fly to his arms for purchase as he kisses her both inside and out.

It feels so damn good to be crowded by him. 

To be eaten alive.

Moving slowly, deliberately, he cradles her skull with one hand while slipping the other down her spine, letting it come to rest at the base for balance just as he begins to tip her backward, taunting gravity to take her, while at the same time turning her head just so, invading her mouth with his tongue and through his expert application of sensations he tricks her into going weightless in his strong arms. Relying on his strength.

It makes her gasp and falter and be unable to do anything but hang on. Making her center surge again.

She clings to him. Feeling caught in the middle of a fall. Trapped during a dip in a dance. One knee bent up with her calf wrapped around the back of his thigh in self-preservation. Her hands clinched into his biceps despite knowing that he would never drop her. 

She feels dangerously suspended in midair with her heartbeat fluttering and her mind full of stars. 

Completely irradiated by the sub-atomic particle beam he's become in the midst of his enthusiasm.

And that's when she's made aware of the proud, repeated nudge of his cock. At the way he's gently dry humping her tilted belly like he just can't help it. Lost in the wilderness of what he's doing to her mouth and possibly not even aware of what's taking place beneath his navel. 

The mere idea that he could be driven so wild so wanton just by kissing her makes her feel uncharacteristically bold and she dares to unclench one hand and palm his perfect ass. Scooping her own hips in while trusting herself completely to his strong arms. Compressing his cock between them.

He groans into her mouth so deeply it vibrates and the little nudges tighten into slick, tawdry drives against her abs. His mouth working hers harder. More hungry. Making her taste his love.

And suddenly she has the overwhelming urge to know what he tastes like.

With a soft pop, she pulls her lips away and watches his eyes roll open as she rights herself, tells him what she's doing with her half-lidded gaze and eels herself down when they've gone back upright. Raking him softly with her fingernails. Careful to pull the waistband out wide as she takes his boxer briefs with her.

When her knees hit the floor and her fingertips press into the corded muscles of his thin naked thighs, she takes up a natural posture like a good little Catholic girl. Folding her socked feet demurely together beneath her as though she's getting ready to pray.

Unaware of the picture she makes for him as he looks down his own virile body to see her there.

Unaware that she's currently launching a brand new kink. 

One involving her in various scraps of pantyhose.

Being down here, she's eye-to-eye with him again. Still gaining her breath back. The leaking dark pink crown of his blood-flushed cock now deceivingly _huge_ before her. She can hear his panting as it tangles with her own, separated only by height. Heavy breaths that ebb like a breeze through a treetop and stall out completely when she takes him in her hand and goes to part her lips.

A gentle hand catches her beneath her chin.

Canting her face to make her look all the way up the tall dark lick of him.

"Are you sure Dana?" He asks softly.

She is. But with her name being spoken like that, she's not sure that she can answer.

He looks absolutely spellbound, looming down at her the way he is with a ripple in his brow. His thoughtfulness pulling at her every sensibility with the blown-open hazel siphon of his eyes. 

Drawing her up. She feels herself ascending.

She turns her head, not breaking their gaze and takes the pad of his nearest thumb between her teeth to suck. Hearing his breath stick. Tasting the sharp bite of his every whorl. 

Letting them both know that she's certain.

He pulls it back and smooths the new wet over her cheekbone. Granting her his own permission by painting her in gloss like an answering sigil.

It's revelatory to taste him for the first time. To actually enjoy the thick silken mouthful she gets from his corona, having to put a steadying hand around the back of his knee when she cradles up her tongue from below and _looks up_.

"Oh shit." He mutters. His mouth shocked open. That same soft wet thumb slowly tracing across her eyebrow. His palm pressed against her ear.

Her lower body clenches at a phantom desire as she lets him slide inside and the very specific way in which his breath goes quick and choppy leaves her feeling drunk, a little dizzy and nearly ready.

And apparently, Mulder feels the same.

He takes a very strict moment to control himself and with evident regret, eases his hips back, pulling himself out of her mouth. Already too excited. "Scully. Please. I'm not gonna...later. I want--" he bites out in pieces. Gulping dramatically. "Raincheck."

And she understands. She's about to shake apart on her own.

He helps her to her feet and she helps him to the couch. Dropping her soaked panties as she goes.

She feels hot and murky scissoring herself open as she levers down over him once he's settled. One knee pressed between the couch cushions and the other kicked out to the floor. Pinioned with her arm braced on the armrest above his head. Gazing down at him.

He looks a feast stretched out naked and hard beneath the chevron of her vulva and with his wide hands curved around her hip blades, he halts her when she goes to reach back for him, stretching his thumb easily to her mons before sliding it down along the crease.

Pressing her juicy sensitized folds into the sharp, swollen tip of her sex. 

"Wait." 

Making her breath catch.

"Can I taste you?" He rumbles.

It's been so damn long since a man's wanted to please her like that.

Scully nods shyly and he smiles and moves. Sinking low while keeping her hijacked. Big hands shifting around her legs as he slides and doesn't stop until he's about to disappear with his shins hanging over the other armrest.

It's shocking to see him like this. Her best friend. Her _partner_. Fox Mulder is about to put his sumptuous lips on her basal own and she shudders at the mere idea. Another torrent of unabashed heat exploding inside her pelvis.

God. She must be absolutely _dripping_. 

And she hopes ruefully that he doesn't drown for a second time.

It makes her sink a hand helplessly into his hair; to feel this unmoored before anything's really been done to her. Meeting his eyes as she claims her handful. Hearing him hum appreciatively. Learning with joy that he's been hiding a sensitive scalp.

His dinnerplate palms are pressing her wide, straining the tendons in her crotch as he positions her just so with his big nose nestled intimately above her well-trimmed light golden thatch.

With his hot breath melting against her liquid folds. 

"What do you think Scully?" He asks with a mischievous glint. Looking straight up past the butterflies in her belly. "Think I should grow a mustache?" 

He presses up as he pulls her down and she giggles just as sharply as she gasps. Taken totally by surprise.

She's immediately suddenly hopelessly ensnared. Squirming in vain. Locked between his grasping fingers and slurping mouth and it shocks her as much as it dazzles her to know that this quixotic man is eating her to the rind like honeydew. Getting his cheeks messy with her slip. 

She lets her eyes roll closed. Her head tip back. Giving herself permission to love it too. 

She can envision where he is beneath her. Her finely-tuned knowledge of anatomy doing her bittersweet favor as he makes her remember all of the vivifying contours of her own sex. A trip traveled timeless by her own questing fingers, but never brought to such sparkling clarity the way his luscious, sinful mouth can do.

A stranger in a familiar land.

He brutalizes her hood with quick, firm lashes until she just can't take it anymore and then subsides at just the right moment to repent with lapping tenderness. Teasing her. Drawing her out.

Volplaning a hand up her body, he drags it heavily between the narrow valley of her breasts to take her gently by the throat, catching his thumb at her bottom lip, easing it out from her teeth where she hadn't realized she'd clamped it.

"Let it out Scully. I want to hear you." He coaxes hungrily around his mouthful and when she opens her eyes in shock at hearing such words spoken in Mulder's imperious husk, she tilts her head down and meets his eyes again. Letting the reality of it push through. Showing her that he's really truly _there_.

And that this is really happening.

She can't deny it now, connected as they are. Sucked into the opal pitch of his eyes. Little sounds of delight begin to escape from her like vapor every time he teases her just so. Every time he flicks at her in just the right way. Just like he wants; she responds.

Pleased, his hand retreats to slip back down her torso and around, making her shudder when he delicately introduces his first two fingers inside her tempered core.

Her thighs tighten and her noises step up into succulent whines. Her fingers tightening as they comb through his soft short strands.

"That's it." He encourages.

The sensation of him pulling out and sinking in makes her flutter. His fingers are so long and glorious that she swears he's tickling her spine.

Louder noises begin to pour out of her with a fresh plunder of his tongue. Lustful cries she'd only ever reserved for the isolation of her bedroom with both doors locked and her face in the muffling confines of her pillow. Her vibrator humming deep inside her after having spent all day tortured by his nearness. Coming apart in a sweaty, shouting mess on her tidy bedsheets only to feel slightly ashamed and presumptuous afterwards.

But now she's here. In his apartment again. Out in the open with strange neighbors all around and him inside her. Unable to help it. Unwilling to care.

He begins to nip delicately at her clit. Rolling it in his teeth. Building her momentum. Making his own lusty sounds in counterpoint that are just the right flavor of dark and sultry to compliment her hedonism. Motivating her to climb.

Her thigh muscles begin jumping when all three of his approaches hit her in unison and he keeps her there, caught in the trap of him, moaning and hitching. Holding her captive.

She's a marionette on twine. A slave to his ministrations.

She cries out loud as he puts his teeth against her and _bites_. Able to read her like a book now 'The Tao of Scully' and he knows without asking that she wants it faster. 

Wants it harder.

So that's what he does.

"Mmm...Mulder." She warns. Flashing closer as he steps up the pace. Feeling herself no longer edging towards purpose, but about to collide.

His fingers are endless and she's fucking herself down on them. Glancing off his face. Shamed at the same time she's shameless. With one fist riveted in his hair, she's hoping she's not hurting him, but it's the only thing she can hold onto anymore. The rest of herself has been lost and she can't possibly think that it can get any better, until she feels him curl his knuckles inside. Towards the capstone of her pleasure.

She loses control of her mouth, tortured on a precipice.

And he saves her like he's meant to, peeling her bra cup down. Pinching one sweet perfect pink nipple in between his finger and thumb, holding it loose and letting it jostle as she naturally moves. Throwing her into greater agony. 

Lighting up an electric string inside her.

"Yes. Do it Scully." He growls against her clit.

Her body condenses around the feeling. Around his voice. Her pelvis as heavy as a thunderstorm.

"Come for me."

He knocks once. Twice. Inside her.

And she opens like a secret. 

"Oh-!"

Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh Mulder!

She yelps high and thin as the waves come barreling down. Rolling her apart from the inside out. She grinds down against him, probably harder than she should given his state. Probably suffocating him. But she just can't help it. 

The pleasure and the pressure supplant her. Washing her smooth like river rocks. She's helpless to it. Choking out groans and whines. And the deluge doesn't stop until he uncorks his fingers. Until she feels herself slip out too.

He supports her as she comes tumbling down on shaky arms. Unclamping from his hair. His hands molded to her sides, keeping her suspended as he kicks up quickly to greet her face and kiss her in welcome as she returns to Earth. The sanguine mess of his lips and chin are a briney smash against her senses. 

He smells and tastes like _her_.

And it's divine.

"Jesus Scully. Jesus." He gasps like he's the one who's come. Biting headily at her lips. Greedy with need.

She can see and hear and _feel_ the desperation of him wanting to be inside her.

And she agrees.

"Condom?" He asks helplessly when she begins to shift into place. Reluctant to break the moment, but a gentleman to the end. Remembering from last time.

She can feel his weeping head as it bumps against her inner thigh. As it bites like a serpent at her hair. Drooling precome as it swings. Seeking her entrance.

She shakes her head and he looks surprised. "Scully."

"I had them do a full spectrum blood analysis. To make sure it wasn't transmittable." She confesses about the parasite from all those weeks ago. Having needed to be sure.

New color rises to her cheeks as she exposes this wanton desire she has for them and she slides her hand between them to take the meaty weight of him back into her palm. 

She holds him poised against her gaping center. Tormenting them both with just the tip. Mouths cracking open when soft hard flesh presses against her turgid edges and threatens to get pulled in. 

"You came back clean. I'm clean and I'm on the pill and I want..."

Gathering up her composure, brooking no argument. She makes her mouth say the words. Putting weight into the breathy purl of her voice.

"I want this Fox."

Her immolation gets no warning.

He plunges into her with one hard shove at the sound of his name. Driving deep and all the way in with a stocky grunt. Making her cry out. Making a shock go through her abdomen as he fills her to the brim. 

She chokes on the fullness of his cock, the tip seeming to end in the vicinity of her throat. And then he stops. Holding there. Slaking her completely as they pant against each other in total surprise. "God. Scully. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He peals, running his knuckles down her face in supplication.

But she doesn't care.

He is inside her.

And she's intoxicated by the primordial power she has to make him feel this way. 

His eyes are cinched closed. His mouth held wide. Teeth scraping along her skin. Threatening to chomp. It's his turn to be overwhelmed now. Abducted by the sensation of the hot wet squeeze around him as he clamps down on her hips to stop her when she starts to move. Breath catching in his skull. Delicious little sounds of torture caught behind his open mouth.

Scully is suddenly conscious of the fact that they're both shaking with excitement and sitting still is revealing all the space he takes up inside her. Her quivering arms barely able to hold her up anymore.

The first time they had done this, it had been her intention to feel something besides hollow. Now, it's her intention to feel what it's like to overflow.

They need to move.

"No. Wait." He pleads in a threaded out sound, stilling her grind. Catching his lip in his teeth when she begins to flex her inner muscles. Ones he's not able to stop.

"Mulder." She pleads back in desperation.

It's too focused. Too intense to sit speared on him like this. Stretched wide and tight and eager and stilled. He has to do something. He has to start moving. Otherwise she's going to climb right out of her socks.

They start slow, building momentum, going in increments he can handle. Toeing the line between too little and too much until they're finally able to churn out a comfortable pace together. A steady rhythm tempered by tender kisses. Ones that burn and give way like candle wax as it flows between them. As their bodies ask and answer. The results satisfying them both.

Skin on skin with Mulder is everything she thought it would be. 

Like nothing she ever could have imagined.

He begins to pick up the pace and soon her own hips are merely trying to keep time.

She's down on her elbows hovering over him now, giving herself over to him. 

Her tongue is laving the underside of his scratchy chin, the pendulous swing of her small breasts skiffing against his chest. Her one exposed nipple striking like a trick match and he pumps into her zealously with his hands palming her asscheeks apart, exposing her most secret cleft to the room's cool air. 

He's using the lower armrest to give himself leverage. Giving himself to her as deeply as he can. Holding her hips low. One finger darting in tantalizing circles around her hole. Touching past. Glancing off. Emboldened by her precious, uninhibited sounds. Making a lot of satisfying noise. 

She doesn't think it could possibly get any better.

And then it does.

"Touch yourself." He tells her, faltering slightly when the words leave his mouth. Clearly still with-it enough to boss her around. "C'mon Scully. Do it. I'm close."

It thrills her to look at his face and know. Know that he likes it when she touches herself. That the mere idea of it makes him plunge into her harder. Knowing she's getting what she needs while his hands are otherwise preoccupied. Knowing that she's taken care of.

She shimmies her fingers between them, her nails skirring his base as her swollen clit sparks like a lighter that refuses to burn, telling her that she probably won't get off again tonight. Which is fine. This is enough. This feels good. It's been wonderful.

"Let it happen Mulder. I--" She coaxes and breaks off. Not wanting him to hold back for her sake anymore. 

She wants to see his face when he comes. Suspecting that it's beautiful.

She squirms like a mink as he ramps up his efforts once more and the sharp yip he jolts out of her when he strikes her cervix in a glancing blow tears open his wild side. He's suddenly frenetic beneath her. Becoming a long, stabbing madness that pounds into her again and again. Churning her insides. Fucking her like a maniac. Balls slapping against her. Making her hair bounce. And her breath catch. And her mind wipe.

And impossibly, she can feel him getting _bigger_.

He's grunting and sweating. Fingers cinching down to hold her in place. Bruising her skin for tomorrow. Undeniably male. And it feels so good to safeguard him as he lets go. Letting him focus all his wild energy somewhere. On her. _In_ her.

"I love you Scully." Mulder bites out at the last second. His eyes clamped closed. His teeth grit against the precipice.

Caught in the throes of his impending climax.

"I know." She says.

And he comes with a shout. 

Slick, pulsing bursts erupt one after the other inside her body. Painting her depths with his seed. Hard fingers locking down even harder. A possessive, visceral gnarl rumbling up out of his throat as he ebbs on the aftershocks of his motions. Making her take every last drop.

And she, honestly thinking she couldn't even do it, falls victim when the tip of his ring finger slips inside her ass and his driving cock hits her in just the right way. She goes. Bowled over once more by a rogue wave that makes her come for a second time, screaming his name in surprise and wonder and delight.

Losing all control.

\--

She's awakened by him gently moving her. Not realizing that she'd fallen asleep.

He hisses at the hand she puts against his chest when she goes to push herself up and immediately tears it away in regret. Pivoting up onto her right elbow, feeling the tug of him from where they're still joined. And she can't believe that she could have possibly forgotten about his ribs.

But he shushes her apologies with kisses to each of her fingertips and finally just leaves her hand lying on top of his face in pure exhaustion. Unable to move.

He sighs the sigh of a sated man. His body completely lax beneath her. Doused in sweat. One long leg bent off and dangling onto the floor.

"I think I lost time there Scully." He jokes with another heavy exhale. "At least a good nine minutes."

She nuzzles against his sideburn, smiling coyly at his smirk. More awake than he is.

"That long huh? Must be nice." And he chuckles like he's supposed to.

She makes a small sound in her throat as they finally come undone and she folds herself between him and the couch cushions. Tempered by their chill. Trying not to lay on him, but still resting her head against his shoulder. Ruffling her fingers through his hair. Needing to be close. She's jostled until his arm can wind underneath and get around the comb of her ribcage. Tickling her side.

"Good?" He asks. As if he doesn't know.

"Very good."

"Better than you thought? Or better than you expected?"

She hears her own words lobbed back at her from their very first case together and huffs, dropping her head back down without answering.

And after a while, she realizes that the apex of her legs is feeling rawly numb and saturated. In fact, it's wetter than it normally would be. Condom or not. She's got her hand down there exploring her labia when Mulder pipes up again. Roused by her squirming. Coming to life when she palms his own sodden hair. Following the evidence.

"I gotta admit Scully. You surprised me there." He says in a satisfied tone, the closest eye peeking open to see her through a web of coppery hair. "I thought that sort of thing only happened in pornos."

Then she freezes. Remembering. Tripping back to the time of her second orgasm. Back to when she was blindsided and apparently had burst against his penetrations like overripe fruit. She feels her face flush in shame and she buries it against his jaw trying not to make a noise. Absolutely humiliated.

She'd only ever done that once before, years ago. And back then she and Marcus had been so drunk and adolescent that they'd simply written it off as too much beer.

Now she was with the person who was fast becoming the real grown-up version of the love of her life and it had happened again. 

She wishes desperately for the cushions to open up and swallow her. A black hole suddenly being found in Mulder's manky green couch would make for a really good X-File. One she could even substantiate.

"Hey. No. I'm honored." Mulder tries, apparently aware of the tenseness of her body. Feeling her attempt to burrow in against him. He uses his nose to try and pry her face up so she can see the truth in his eyes. "Scully really. I love it. You don't have to worry."

"How?" She whimpers. "I most likely ruined your couch."

"If anything, you added to the character." He's being flippant and it only makes her want to hide all the harder. Stupid inhibitions. Stupid self-control. Why couldn't she just orgasm like a _normal_ person?

"You should kiss me." He suggests. Still being far too blase about his work partner staining his furniture.

But she still refuses to move. Maybe if she sits still for long enough, he'll forget she's even here.

He puts his lips against her forehead, blowing her cover. Entreating her with kindness. "Please?"

She can't deny him if he's asking her straight-out and having him this close to her face is still technically avoiding his gaze. He takes his time to kiss her, holding them together for long stretches by the back of her head as she feels his breaths blow out across her upper lip. Coming out steady.

She calms a bit in the assurances his tenderness gives her and he slides his hand around to crook his finger under her chin, hoping she won't pull away. "I really, really love it Scully." He says insistently, trapping her eyes. "It makes me feel proud. Like I've accomplished something. I'll apologize for the goosing I gave you if that's what you want, but the truth is, I'm not really sorry about that either. It was pretty damn hot and I can't wait to do it again."

She flushes with a new tone of embarrassment, one in which she's able to settle down some. "Hm. Well, don't expect it to happen all the time. I don't even know what causes it." 

He palms her ass as she melts over the edge of him. Finally going complicit as she throws a leg over his hip and he hauls the blanket over top of them. It feels good to be ensconced. Not so naked anymore as they cool. Coming down ticking like radiators.

"Probably not the best idea to tempt us with a challenge like that." He says.

She rubs her cheek against the smooth skin on his shoulder, knowing it's true.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you." He says concernedly all of a sudden, turning his head again with his eyebrows knitted. His voice low. "I uh...didn't mean to...do that. Well I did but I don't know what came over me."

"Mm. I'm fine." She smiles, reveling at the idea that she's going to walk a little bow-legged tomorrow. That when she meets him in the office again, they're going to have to pretend like this never happened at all and she's already looking forward to the next time it does. 

But she can see from his face that her words are not enough to quell his worry and she avers into the safe, musky brume of his armpit. Tickling the soft hairs with her nose. "I liked it Mulder. You don't have to apologize."

"You do things to me Scully." He warns and she huffs and he kisses her until he can't hold his head up anymore. Apologizing anyway. Expressing his love.

They float in the lassitude for a while again and for the first time in a long time the silence between them is easy. How it should be. 

How it should have always been.

His heartbeat is a steady, earthly vibration beneath her ear. His metered breaths are putting her to sleep.

"Thanks for coming over tonight." He says, making her blink awake, rejoining when he feels her smile against his chest. Dragging his finger over her hair. "No really. Even if this hadn't happened - which, for the record, I'm very glad it did. I still enjoy your company. Even when we just talk. Even when it comes to work. Especially when it comes to work. I got lucky when they put you on the X-Files Scully. I wouldn't want anyone else watching my back. We make a good team."

Some men simply fall asleep after sex. Some wander about on strings-of-conscious thought. Mulder, she finds out, is unabashedly honest when it comes to the post-coital twilight of lying with a lover. Sex to him acts like sodium pentathol. He tells the truth and nothing but the truth. So help him. 

She beams where he can't see her, snuggling in. "I feel the same way about you Mulder." She admits. "As challenging as you can be sometimes..."

"Mmm. Somebody's gotta put you through your paces." He sounds like he's drifting off. "Are you gonna stay the night?"

"It's already morning." She says, suddenly aware that she no longer has her watch on and not quite certain when and how she lost it. She judges the time by the gossamer froth of dawn that's currently seeping in through his window. Casting everything it touches into a fine crystal hew.

"Well are you gonna stay the morning then? I gotta get up in a couple of hours, but I'd like for you to stay."

"Do you have a bed?" Come to think of it. Did he even have a bedroom?

He shifts and sighs. Words slurring together. "No. But I could get one for you. If that's what you wanted." He says easily.

"That's quite the commitment to make for a fling."

He comes out of his dazing slumber again, his tone a bit hurt. "Is that what this is?"

She feels bad for waking him. Dancing her fingers in a gentle pattern over his heart. Biting her lip.

"No. It feels more important than that." 

Gravely important, if she's being truly honest.

It was just that she just wasn't sure what he thought about the whole grand scheme and was afraid to put too much stake in it herself. She wasn't sure how she was going to take it if this monumental, umbrageous feeling inside her concerning him might not be reciprocated. But it does her good to know that it's important to him as well.

And that they'll have time to feel out the edges together.

She kisses the flat pink disk of his nipple and he squirms, taking it as the apology it's meant to be. Going back to tracing her fingers in the center of his chest, her head propped up on her elbow. Her mind clanking away. Thinking of all the implications.

"Mulder?" 

He hums, nearly gone now. Not having enough energy to open his eyes, but able to clasp his hand around hers with the last vestiges of his effort. Holding it against his heart.

"What are we going to do when someone finds out about us?"

Because inevitably they would.

He yawns, a big wide toe-curler that makes his jawbone click. "That's easy Scully." He mumbles, pushing his face beneath hers for safekeeping. Pursing his lips against her bicep. Talking into her skin.

"We'll just do what the government does;

"We'll deny everything."

\--  
THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright. well, hopefully i didn't lose you there at the end. for whatever reason, i seem to have forgotten how to write.
> 
> P.S. Hockamock Swamp, Burger Baron, and horsehair worms are all totally real. though they really have nothing at all to do with each other except for this story. but you should TOTALLY look up the worms! they're super grodey and cool. thanks for reading!! see you on the flip side.


End file.
